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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
Ah, to have a crowd pressing in and hearing the Word of God as Jesus experienced at the start of today’s Gospel Reading, or, if you like to fish at all, to receive a catch of fish so great as to break nets and sink boats! The miracle with the fish was real, to be sure, but the miracle also seems to have boded well for Peter and the other apostles’ then‑future work of catching people. Of course, as the Gospel Reading makes clear, not every time that nets are cast do they enclose such a large number of fish, and, as we know from our own experience, not every single time the Word goes out does the Church seem to catch such a large number of the corresponding people (confer and compare Matthew 13:47-50 regarding the end of the age).
This past week, a report popped up on one of the news websites that I usually read, a report about a liberal Baptist congregation in Charlotte, North Carolina, that recently asked its pastor of nine years to step down, in part because half as many people were worshiping there on average compared to one year ago, with the departing members’ taking their offerings with them and complaining about the pastor’s heavy focus on social and racial justice and not enough focus on caring for the flock (NPR). The report said nothing about whether the pastor indicted people for supposed sins other than their being white, or whether he proclaimed the forgiveness of sins by grace through faith in Jesus Christ at all.
In today’s Gospel Reading, Simon Peter let Jesus into his boat, put out a little from the land for Jesus to teach the people from the boat, and even put out into the deep and let down his nets for a catch, after they had toiled all night and received nothing. This was not the first time that the two men had met, however. A few verses before today’s Gospel Reading, the Divinely‑inspired St. Luke narrates Jesus’s miraculously healing Simon’s mother‑in‑law (Luke 4:38-39), but apparently the miraculous catch of fish is what made Simon realize that the One in his boat was God in human flesh, maybe because Peter had not only watched the miracle happen but been a part of it. Peter, probably his brother Andrew and some hired men in his boat, as well as James and John and any others in the other boat, were astonished at the catch of fish—their astonishment indicates that they took the catch as a genuine miracle, a showing forth of the true God in Jesus’s flesh. We do not know exactly what Jesus had been teaching, but Simon’s telling Jesus to depart from him is not Simon’s rejecting Jesus as a preacher, like those people in North Carolina, but it is Simon’s recognizing that sinners cannot be in the presence of the Holy God (for example, Psalm 130:3). Likewise, in today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 6:1-13), Isaiah had the same sense of unworthiness and fear (Marshall, ad loc Luke 5:8, pp.204-205, with reference to 1 Samuel 6:20; Judges 6:22; 13:22; 1 Kings 17:18; Job 42:5-6; and Matthew 8:8).
As the Lord told Isaiah, not everyone will turn and be healed, but, enabled by the Holy Spirit, like Simon, no matter our age, we all should confess that we are sinful, deserving of temporal and eternal punishment, and we should hear the Lord say, “Do not be afraid”. Whether we wrongly have not wanted to hear His Word, whether we wrongly have complained about the results of faithful preaching of the Gospel and administering of the Sacraments, whether we wrongly have rejected His ministers, or whatever else our sin might be, when we confess our sin and trust God to forgive us for Jesus’s sake, then we hear His ministers speak His words of absolution, forgiving our sin. For, in Christ, as the seraph told Isaiah, our guilt is taken away, and our sin is atoned for.
In today’s Gospel Reading, Simon went from calling Jesus “Master” to calling Jesus “Lord”, but Simon apparently still did not understand that the Lord Jesus had come to Simon precisely because Simon was a sinful man. We can say with St. Paul’s letter to Timothy that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom we are the “foremost” (1 Timothy 1:15 ESV, NASB95), or the “worst” (NIV82), or “chief” (KJV, ASV). We are caught not like fish to be killed (unless one catches and releases), but we are caught in order to live. As contrary to experience as a daytime catch of fish in deep water, so contrary to experience is God’s seeking sinners, as Jesus Himself tried to explain to the Jewish leaders a few verses after today’s Gospel Reading, saying that He had not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance (Luke 5:32). Out of God’s great love, mercy, and grace, Jesus died on the cross for the sins of the whole world—including Peter’s sin, your sin, and my sin—and then Jesus rose from the dead. When we repent, then God forgives us, making us holy through His Word and Sacraments, so that we can stand in His presence in the assembly of the righteous (Psalm 1:5).
Like us before them, our members Ben and Melody’s twin sons will soon come into God’s presence in the assembly of the righteous by way of Holy Baptism. No person so caught has to be thrown back because he or she is too small or too young! In the net or boat of the Church we hear the Word of God read and preached in Divine Services, and we learn more about it in Bible classes and studies. We privately confess to our pastors the sins that particularly trouble us, and they individually forgive us at Christ’s command and by His authority in Holy Absolution. And, so heard and absolved, we are admitted to the Holy Supper, where bread that is the Body of Christ given for us and wine that is the Blood of Christ shed for us touch our lips and so take away our guilt and atone for our sin. All that, not as by a seraph to Isaiah, or the Son of God to Simon, but by those like Simon and the other apostles, those whom God has called and sent to us.
In today’s Gospel Reading, after Jesus essentially forgave Simon by telling him not to be afraid, Jesus told Simon that from then on he would be catching people. Jesus prophetically spoke of the future as a fact and essentially commanded Simon to follow him (Marshall, ad loc Luke 5:10, p.205; confer Matthew 4:19; Mark 1:17). For the most part, Simon and Andrew and James and John left everything, as we heard, and entered a new relationship with Jesus and had new experiences catching people (confer and compare John 21:1-14). You and I do not follow and serve Jesus in exactly the same way as those apostles, but, as we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (1 Corinthians 14:12b-20), we do use the gifts that the Holy Spirit gives to us in order to strive to excel in building up the Church, though our vocations likely center mostly on our families and society. But, at the most basic level, we do not send our Lord away from us, nor do we run away from Him, but we ask Him to stay with us, and we seek Him out. Fish can flap themselves off a hook or wiggle their way out of a net, and believers can fall from faith. But, as we with daily contrition and faith live in God’s forgiveness of sins, He preserves us unto eternal life.
I mentioned at the outset that the miraculous catch of fish seems to have boded well for Peter and the other apostles’ then‑future work of catching people. The Day of Pentecost might come to our minds, when, through Peter’s preaching, the Lord added to the Church about three thousand souls (Acts 2:14, 41). But, undoubtedly there were other times when Peter preached, and no one repented and believed. Yet, at the Lord’s word, Peter still preached law and Gospel. At Pilgrim, we do likewise, leaving the catch to the Lord.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +